Mysterious Blots On Love's
Landscape

This is one of those novels that you're not too sure
about to begin with but it has something about it that makes you persevere and,
suddenly, about a quarter of the way in, you break through into the most
fantastic story.

Once I had been drawn in, I found it impossible to
put down.

Beauman has plenty of plaudits: this is her seventh
novel and Rebecca's Tale, her sequel to Daphne du Maurier's classic
Rebecca, was particularly well reviewed. She certainly deserves a wider
audience.

Like Rebecca's Tale, The Landscape Of
Love is something of an experiment, written from the point of view of
various characters, interspersed with letters, reports and diary entries.

To begin with, I was confused about who was imparting
what information: the novel's early narrator is 13-year-old Maisie, a
devilishly intelligent girl with two older, more glamorous sisters, Finn and
Julia.

Maisie is unreliable and difficult to read because
she has quite an imagination (it is not until later that we find out exactly
why this is).

It is the late Sixties and the once prosperous
family, down-at-heel since their father's death, are living in a crumbling
medieval abbey, where Maisie can hear the ghosts of the nuns whispering to her.
Once you get past her quirks, though, a charming and bewitching story unfolds.

Later, the narrative voice switches to Daniel, a
childhood friend of the family, a boy from the village who has made good.

His friendship with the family spurs him on to study
hard, get into Cambridge, then move to London to make his fortune in
advertising in the Eighties.

The novel switches back and forth in time as we
alternate between the different versions of events: Maisie's account has been
interrupted, it turns out, because she was involved in an accident, the cause
of which no one understands.

Daniel holds himself responsible and is trying to
find out what really happened, why he has lost Finn - the love of his life -
and why third sister Julia hates him so much. By the time we work out what
really happened, Maisie is 20 years older than when we first met her.

At least part of the mystery centres on a portrait of
the three sisters drawn by Daniel's Cambridge friend Lucas one disastrous
summer. Two decades later, Lucas is a famous artist and the portrait is the
subject of fevered analysis. Daniel begins to wonder if there was something
about the portrait and all the sittings that Lucas asked the sisters to do for
the painting that might have caused the family to be dogged by tragedy.

So, he begins to pick apart a house of cards that
threatens to destroy his own life.

The novel is full of motifs of the occult: Tarot
cards, crystal balls, Romany sayings (Daniel's mother and grandmother were both
fortune tellers). There is an atmosphere of foreboding, as if a curse hangs
over Maisie's family.

There are both subtle and obvious mysteries to be
revealed and to give away too much of the plot would ruin the delightful
suspense that runs through this book. If you are a fan of delayed
gratification, this novel repays patience in spades.

I found the final resolution incredibly disturbing
and upsetting - I think because I had become so involved in and convinced by
the characters.

It has haunted me for weeks - always the mark of
passionate and assured writing.